


Of Bones Are Coral Made

by callmecathy



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alcohol problems, Gen, Pre- Cura Te Ipsum, Tenuous partnerships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 17:53:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmecathy/pseuds/callmecathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reese falls off the wagon. Finch catches him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Bones Are Coral Made

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Spatz for the great beta. =)  
> For this Kink Meme [prompt](http://meme-of-interest.dreamwidth.org/1507.html?thread=394979#cmt394979).  
> Title from a verse in Ariel's Song in Shakespeare's _The Tempest_.

He's there in time; he saves the number. It's easy. Too easy. Just another straightforward, grimy case, except this one leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Every time he swallows he can feel the bile down his throat, the bitterness clenching in his stomach.

It's been awhile since he's felt alive enough to feel like this.

He takes the battery out of his phone.

He finds himself in front of a bar.

He finds himself inside of the bar.

He finds himself taking a drink.

It's too fast and not near fast enough before his balance starts wobbling and the floor starts falling a mile away from the top of his bar stool. He's had-- how many drinks? He never keeps track.

"Another?" the bartender asks.

Reese likes this dive. The woman doesn't ask questions even when the other patrons slur their stories at her, she doesn't look at him with curious, probing eyes; she just gives, gives and gives, an endless line of liquor and ambivalence. There are a few drop left in Reese's glass, gleaming lethal in the gold light. His eyelids tip low.

There's a spatter of laughter from a back table.

"Did you drive here?" the bartender asks him.

Reese fumbles in his pocket and hands her his keys. He wasn't planning on driving anyway. He doesn't have anywhere to go.

A woman in the corner table hisses. She jerks backwards as one of the men at the table beside hers runs a hand across her thigh. Reese immediately feels his body tensing, struggling to snap back into what's long become a reflex now: stiffening, loosening, readying to hit and be hit.

"She's a regular." the bartender says, watching them close. "Believe me, she handles herself. A minute here and she'll be tossing her drink in his eye and smacking him upside with this baton thingy she keeps in her purse."

Reese quite honestly doesn't care whether or not she can take care of herself. Already, the building adrenaline kick is burning away some of the stupor, like a light through the fog, except it's more the bait to a trap. Drinking isn't his only vice. There's being a superhero, too.

He'd longed for it as a child; he'd strived for it as a soldier. Of course he only gets the opportunity after he's dead.

Reese wonders if Finch had known. When he'd made his pitch beneath the Queensboro Bridge, he must have known that he was offering Reese more than just a job-- he was giving him a new compulsion.

Perhaps the word "purpose" is just a euphemism for "addiction".

He climbs off his bar stool and steadies himself on the counter till he's got two thirds of his equilibrium back. "You can hardly walk," the bartender is protesting, but he manages.

The woman is trapped between two elbows and a third man. "Screw you," she tells him, polite, looking into the bottom of her glass.

"Love to, will you help?"

Her hand is already digging into her purse.

Reese lurches between them, grabbing the edge of the table to steady himself. A glass topples on its end and the men jump to their feet, scattering.

"Sorry." Reese says. He reaches down, settling a rocking trash bin that he'd knocked into with his calf.

"What the hell," the man says, yanking a wedge of napkins out of the holder. He bends, soaking up the mess. When Reese doesn't move he turns. "You need something?"

He needed-- well, he couldn't have what he needed. "Just... wondering why you're harassing that nice young woman over there."

She eyes him. Her purse and her glass clink as she snatches them up and takes them to the table she's relocating to.

"Going somewhere?" the man calls. He turns away, eyes narrowing. The napkins scrunch in one fist. "Yeah? Why don't you mind your own business?"

"Maybe I will," Reese says, shifting closer, "maybe I won't."

The man's shoulders ratchet up with Reese's movement. He's hair-trigger and drunk, Reese can see it spreading through his body like wildfire: the locked jaw, the fists clenching white, the tension through his arms. It'll only take one more step.

Hours of circling suspects with Kara in dust-ridden interrogation rooms had taught him how easy it was to exploit a person's personal space. He'd learned that proximity was a weapon.

It would be easy, to avoid this. Reese doesn't have to do anything more than walk away.

Reese reaches towards his waist and imperceptibly drops his gun into the trash can. Then he eases a step forward, too close, so they're half a breath away. "Or maybe--"

The first punch almost misses on its own.

Reese sways to the left, grabs the man's flailing arm and flings him over his colleagues' table. A scattering of bodies; the table flips. Glass shattering, a shout and the metal bang of the napkin holder. One of the men rears up and swings wild. Reese catches the fist in his hand and twists, pushing him into the other two men struggling to their feet.

He lunges to the side to avoid a swinging chair. By the time his balance is back and the fourth man is upright, Reese is running on fumes, god only knows how many drinks down. He's fighting on memory alone, because he is a weapon; his default is _hurting._

He trips over the tangle of limbs on the ground. There's a wayward punch whistling in from the side. He braces for it, knowing he won't be fast enough: his vision blurs on impact and the air rushes by; he's falling.

The darkness is easier.

                                                                                                             *

Reese wakes up in the back of a police cruiser.

He winds up in the Precinct.

The room is too small and the fluorescents are too bright and it's all too familiar.

"You can have one call," the cop tells him, and he's young: bright, earnest-eyed and trying to help. When Reese doesn't answer the man leans in. Far too close. Reese could grab the gun at the cop's hip in less than a second, except he wouldn't even have to: when they stepped in this far, Kara always preferred to break their necks.

_The closer you get_ , she'd told him over a fractured body, _the more danger you're in_.

"There's a payphone right outside," the officer says. "Is there anyone you have to call?"

He shakes his head.

It's a lie.

Lock-up is, comparatively, rather nice. Reese has spent too many nights-- either forcibly or by choice-- in places with neither facilities nor beds. His cell has both, the latter of which looks more comfortable than his own. His neighbors include a tripped-up looking kid and a stone-still, dark-eyed figure, and a booze-drenched man slumped in the corner. Reese envies the last one. Reese is miles past sober but nowhere near drunk enough.

It takes a lot of whiskey to get where he wants to be. He's got a very high tolerance for oblivion.

It's Friday, which means he has the weekend in a six-by-eight to look forward to. He could do a lot worse-- six feet _under_ , being the vague accommodations he's thinking of.

He sinks onto the bed, leans back, and closes his eyes.

                                                                                                                 *

The clang of the door reverberates through his head.

Even before that uneven tread drifts down the hall, Reese already knows. He sits up, too fast, and the room spins wildly. _"Yes, yes, that's him,"_ Reese hears him say. He's not sure he likes the effect that those sounds are beginning to have on him. They're getting to be as familiar as a cup of coffee or the click of a gun-- which one of the two, he isn't sure.

When the walls stop tilting Finch is standing on the other side of the bars and the guard is rattling through a link of keys. It's been less than three hours.

Maybe a number came in.

Finch steps inside, shoulders tightening as he passes through the bars. He avoids Reese's eyes.

"Can you stand?" Finch asks.

"Yes." Reese says.

"Can you walk?"

"Yes."

"Then we should go." His voice is painfully immaculate.

Rather than try to breach an unbreachable wall, Reese concentrates on getting to his feet. The other inmates are watching them. Finch is ridiculously out of place in his three-piece suit and expensive aftershave and four-foot-deep radius of fine-society. And then Reese looks down at himself. In his black-and-whites and bespoke suit; in his shined shoes, with his gelled hair.

He's almost as much of an outlier here as Finch is.

He can still feel the faint scratch of his thrift-store clothes.

The guard leads them out. Reese follows Finch towards the back exit, tensing as the young cop hurries past with a gallon-sized cup of coffee and a folder under his arm. His eyes are startled wide: wide, that someone had come for Reese.

"Good, good. Can I--" When Reese sways his hands flap out, first towards Reese, then Finch, when the other man takes a limping step. "Can I help? I could, I could pull your car around, sir, or--"

"We'll be just fine, Officer Goodwin." Finch says curtly.

Goodwin blinks.

Reese watches Finch's face go carefully blank. "I was informed of the arresting officer's name when I called." He gestures minutely towards Reese and ushers them through the doors.

Reese suspects that this is the first time Finch has been to the city lock-up. He seems as off balance as Reese feels right now.

It's cold, it's somewhere past midnight, and Finch's car is a black, unmarked vehicle rippling off lamplight. It's not so much déjà vu as a repeat of a pattern.

"Nice of you to come get me, Finch." Reese says, slurring the words some. He focuses on not falling over. "Why didn't you send your matching bodyguards?"

Finch jerks open the door to the backseat. Apparently Reese has been demoted from shotgun position. He gets-- he falls-- in as Finch heads around the other side. The car is a churning sea beneath him as Finch drives. Every pothole and sharp turn makes his stomach seethe and he lays his head against polyester and leather, breathes in through the nausea. The least he can do is not throw up in Finch's car.

"This the silent treatment?" Reese asks. When Finch doesn't answer, he ventures, "that's a little childish of you, don't you think?"

Finch's eyes cut to his in the rearview: pale, disembodied orbs. Bottomless, unless Reese is just looking back at himself. He finds that he's holding his breath.

The car bumps and Finch's gaze slides back to the road. "You'll be pleased to hear that neither the bartender nor the men intend on pressing charges. Miss Dunn seems to think your behavior was noble, if misguided; one of the young men was under the age of twenty one. All traces of your recent run-in with the NYPD will be erased."

It's not an answer.

                                                                                                                  *

Something jabs into his shoulder.

He opens his eyes.

Finch is poking him, and he's close-- too close, leaned awkwardly towards Reese across the backseat. There's no way for either of them to hide from it now: Reese expects disapproval in his eyes, maybe disappointment, but it's not quite that. It's more. What, he isn't sure. Finch just looks, and Reese just feels-- he isn't sure _what_ he feels, only that he _feels_.

He tries to swallow it back.

Finch draws away. "It isn't far. Can you make it?" There's a shorter cadence to his words, clipping off the ends.

He starts to pull himself upright. He feels minimally better, but that's temporary: it's probably just the brisk air and the dampness of the rain. In a few hours, his head will drumbeat in a full-on hangover.

The ground tilts when he stands and he's hanging onto the side of the car. Finch steps forward, wedging a shoulder under one of his arms.

"I'm fine." he hears himself say. He is. He just needs time to get his balance after spending an hour or less flat on his back. He needs time to get used to the feel of someone holding him up.

"I can take some of your weight," Finch says, "not all of it."

"Frick and Frack... on vacation?"

"Mr. Bryd and Mr. Campell--" Gravel spins unevenly under their feet. "--are not your caretakers."

_And you are?_ Reese wants to ask, but he can't quite dredge up the nerve. Or maybe he doesn't want to hear the answer. It registers that Finch had used his personal security duo's last names, which are two more leads than Reese had had before. Possibly more importantly, it registers that Finch isn't as guarded around him when he's drunk.

It means something. He's not sure what. Yet.

Reese hasn't had this many drinks for too long, but he still knows how to step into his unbalanced sways. It's hardly something that one forgets; it's seared into his muscle memory. It scares him, the ease with which he's slipped back into this.

Except Finch, too, seems to know what he's doing. He accommodates Reese's poor balance and keeps them evenly tipped forward, far enough so each step slides easily, slight enough so they don't fall. _Too smooth,_ Reese thinks, for someone to be doing this for the first time.

Finch double and triple secures the door, and Reese wants to clear the house. He doesn't care to rely on Finch's locks. Except.

Except the ground is rocking again and when he looks up the ceiling is whirl pooling above him; his back is flat on a mattress. A lamp flicks on. The bedroom is small, sparse, nothing identifiable or unique.

Finch wouldn't have brought him here if there was.

Finch is hovering at the edge of the bed. It's regret, Reese thinks he finally identifies, in Finch's expression, or pain; maybe memory. He still doesn't know why.

"Is there a number, Finch?"

His eyebrows drag down. "No number." He reaches behind himself-- Reese should be tensing, identifying exit-strategies and weapons close-at-hand, but somehow he doesn't. Finch pulls out a roll of bandages.

Reese's chest suddenly aches and it's hard to swallow and this-- he can't identify what _this_ is. It's hard to remember what it feels like to feel again. He shakes his head slightly and pulls his arms back.

"Your hands--"

"I'll _hand_ le it in the morning."

Finch lays the kit on the bedside table with a final snap. "As you wish, Mr. Reese." After a moment the footsteps recede. The door is opening when it hits Reese, the fear.

"Finch?" Fear-- that's been awhile, too: he hasn't cared enough to be afraid. He wants to ask Finch if he'll still be here in the morning, him and his promise of purpose. He wants to ask for one of those guarantees that he doesn't buy into.

Finch is waiting.

The question gets stuck somewhere along his trachea.

Finch speaks when he doesn't, tinny against the silence. "Why?"

Reese watches that still form, limned in harsh lines against the almost-light.

"I watched you consume eleven shots of whiskey in two hours. I thought a job, responsibility, would be enough-- why?" he asks, simple, puzzled.

Reese had thought Finch had known. He'd thought-- then again, he was expecting too much. Finch was, so far as Reese had seen, not particularly adept at _whys;_ the _whats,_ yes, but not the meanings for the less exact answers.

"Wanted a drink." Reese says at last. It's a lie. He didn't want a drink: he'd wanted ten; he'd wanted twenty.

At this point, he doubts that's good enough for Finch.

The door shuts.

                                                                                                             *

He was wrong about the drumbeat. It's a goddamn jackhammer.

Reese reaches up, slow; the minor movement makes his stomach clench. He presses the heel of his hand against his forehead.

He knows that opening his eyes, to the light and the sun, is going to hurt.

It doesn't. Fuzzy light is filtering in through the closed curtains, leaving the room wrung-out, too exposed and not exposed enough. The drapes had been open when Reese had shut his eyes. When he eases himself into a sitting position, a blanket slips off his torso. Another unexpected.

Reese is good at _whys._ It's the ones concerning Finch that elude him.

He keeps finding more. The two aspirin on the bedside table beside the full glass of water; the suit, his size, folded primly on the dresser; a bottle of Alka-Seltzer on the corner table.

He downs the aspirin and drops a tablet into what's left of the water and brings the suit with him as he pads down the hall. He creeps past walls and locked rooms; it takes him a second to register the light familiar patter of keystrokes coming from around the corner.

It takes him longer to realize that Finch is still here.

He doesn't particularly feel like answering to whatever that means, so he locates the bathroom and takes a shower. Brushes his teeth, disinfects his hands. They're a mess, scrapes and slivers and shards of glass, but nothing appears to need stitches and he doesn't bother with gauze-- that requires intensive one-handed maneuvers and more dexterity than he possesses at the moment.

Finch's medicine cabinet reveals nothing more than Reese had already guessed: prescriptions for pain, spasms. When he's feeling mildly human, he searches the rest of the house. He knows he won't find anything, but he can't ignore the training that the Agency hammered into him.

The rest of the rooms are just as spare as the one Reese had been in. Whatever ghosts Finch has, they don't leave shadows.

Reese finds him sitting behind his laptop, eyes hidden under reflections of terminal text. There's a tea kettle on the stove sending plumes of steam into the air. Now that he's had a chance to get used to it, the slants of sunlight don't hurt that much.

Reese scuffs his foot on the floor.

Finch's head raises. There's nothing inexplicable in his face anymore-- only calm, unbroken surface tension. A photo rests near his left hand.

"You have another number." Reese says.

"We received it a few hours ago."

_We._

Something floods his chest-- relief? anticipation? It's been awhile since he's had room for anything but guilt.

The kettle whistles, and Finch rises. "The fridge is stocked," he says, returning to his laptop with a cup of tea.

Reese locates a carton of eggs and a jug of milk, grimacing as he surface catches against the skin on his hands. He cracks two eggs even though the thought of them makes his stomach churn again. "Over easy or scrambled?"

There's a micro-pause in Finch's typing, followed by a spate of clicks. Reese tends to consider deflection an affirmative, so he tosses another two eggs into the pan.

"I would like to offer you an apology, Mr. Reese." Finch says behind him. "I believe I was rather insensitive last night. I allowed personal emotions to bias my perception."

He forces himself not to turn. "Happens to the best of us."

A slight noise, as if Finch were turning the cup between his hands. "It was the case, wasn't it?"

He turns an egg over. Too hard. The yolk breaks and seeps across the skillet.

"Her husband will receive a long sentence." Finch says. "He'll never hurt her again."

Scrambled it is, then.

"You saved her."

He thinks of clean white sheets and tequila shots and hotels in Mexico. _Lost chances..._ Cruel irony, that saving their number-- saving every person that isn't her-- makes him hurt more. A sizzle of oil lands on his wrist and burns him.

"You've done this before." Reese says, and he recalls those closed curtains; he remembers the sureness of Finch's support as he'd leaned on him.

No answer.

"A relative," Reese presses, mildly. "Father?" Because personal emotion: it had to be someone close, if the weight in Finch's eyes had meant anything last night, had to be more than an associate or a colleague or--

"A friend," Finch says. Something rattles. "Here."

Reese turns. His car keys are resting on the wood.

"Your car was impounded, but the computer systems at the Precinct malfunctioned last night. Several of their records were lost. It should be released as soon as they realize their mistake." A small, black device slides across the table to join the keys.

A phone.

"Is this the part where you tell me to give you a call whenever I get the urge to pick up the bottle?" Reese asks.

"I think it's important," Finch says, studiously focused on his laptop monitor, "that you are aware that you can always reach me."

_You get one call,_ the cop had told him, as if he would have needed more than one.

Reese lays down the spatula and retraces his steps through the hall; when he returns, he flicks off the stove.

He sets the first aid kit on the table.

Sunlight glints off Finch's glasses, turning his eyes unreadable.

Reese tucks his keys and his phone into his pocket. "Guess I could use a hand," he says.

After a moment, Finch carefully pushes his laptop to the side. "I have two." He reaches for the first aid kit, and begins bandaging Reese up.


End file.
